My paper makes a case for an ecological and democratic global political order based on and inspired by the relevant resources in the tradition of Confucian political thought. I will do so by putting into conversation two most prominent contemporary proponents of Confucian cosmopolitan thinking, Zhao Tingyang of People’s Republic of China and Na Jongseok of South Korea. My thesis is that the concepts of tianxia (天下) and daedong (datong 大同 ), when reimagined through the lens of an ecologically grounded cosmopolitan democratic thinking, could offer a way to liberate the global commons from its enslavement to the reign of extractive neo-liberal global capitalism and the hegemonic/imperial nation-states.
My argument runs as follow: in a series of publications in the last two decades or so, especially All under Heaven: The Tianxia System for a Possible World Order, Zhao Tingyang has put forward a proposal that we go beyond the nation-state to take tianxia as a paradigm of political order and a measure of political legitimacy. Rooted in the ancient Chinese political order and held up as a supreme political ideal throughout the “Confucian” imperial history of China, tianxia as a concept of world political order is without any externality (that is, any “foreigner” and “enemy”), the only meaningful political demarcation being the porous and shifting boundaries between the civilized and the barbarous (as not-yet-educated). As such, Zhao argues, tianxia points to a pluralistic world order in which the peaceful co-existence of political entities (primarily nation-states) is premised on their overlapping interests and mutually compatible stakes in the global commons, the shared bounty of our planetary home.
Whereas Zhao’s proposal is a ground-breaking attempt to re-imagine a more peaceful and equitable international order beyond dominant Euro- and West-centric theoretical paradigms in political philosophy, he is somewhat reticent and muted on the question of the democratic potential of his proposal, perhaps for understandable reasons of his personal and socio-political location. Na Jongseok, on the other hand, has advanced the notion of daedong democracy—most recently in Daedong Minjujuui wa 21segi yugajeok bipaniron (Daedong Democracy and 21st-century Confucian Critical Theory) as a critical theoretical paradigm of a Confucian democracy that is responsive to the ecological and cosmopolitan challenges of the current global political and economic order. Drawing on what he argues is a distinctive trait within the history of Korean Confucianism (daedong thought) that appealed to the ancient Chinese (Confucian) utopian ideal of datong, Na advances the paradigm of daedong democracy in which the people-oriented (minbon/minben 民本) humane politics (injeong/renzheng 仁政) of traditional Confucian political thought is transformed into a participatory “public-square” democracy that is centrally focused on the public matters, from the concerns of a nation-state as a democratic republic all the way to those of the planetary commonwealth. Daedong democracy, he argues, addresses the decolonial and de-Europeanizing concerns of both the advocates of Confucian communitarian democracy and the champions of Confucian meritocracy, while carrying out a dialectical negation of the Western liberal democratic political tradition, being critical of the latter’s individualistic presuppositions while responding positively to its civic republican ideals.
All in all, Zhao’s proposal for tianxia world order and Na’s theory of daedong democracy provide each other with vital correctives that enhance their respective relevance and theoretical power. Na’s idea of daedong democracy offers a democratic vision deeply rooted in the tradition of Confucian utopian thought and hence able to serve as an effective defense against the criticisms directed at what is arguably the greatest weakness of Zhao’s proposal, namely, the expansionist, imperialistic, and often tyrannical forms of the tianxia ideal’s realization in the political history of China. Zhao’s proposal for tianxia world order, on the other hand, supplies Na’s democratic theory with a more robust ecological and cosmopolitan paradigm that could successfully counter the tendency of Na’s theorizing to linger within the bounds of nation-states, preoccupied as he is with the development of South Korea as a full-bodied democratic republic in her recent history.
My paper makes a case for an ecological and democratic global political order based on and inspired by the relevant resources in the tradition of Confucian political thought. I will do so by putting into conversation two most prominent contemporary proponents of Confucian cosmopolitan thinking, Zhao Tingyang of People’s Republic of China and Na Jongseok of South Korea. My thesis is that the concepts of tianxia (天下) and daedong (datong 大同), when reimagined through the lens of an ecologically grounded cosmopolitan democratic thinking, could offer a way to liberate the global commons from its enslavement to the reign of extractive neo-liberal global capitalism and the hegemonic/imperial nation-states.